Civil Twilight have been playing music together since they were teenagers growing up in South Africa, emulating the rock music they heard coming out of Europe and America, from Oasis, U2 and Nirvana to The Verve, The Police, Muse and Radiohead.
Civil Twilight envelopes you in its multi-layered sound and vision. You don't necessarily hear a whole lot of the music of Africa on the band's self-titled debut, but you can hear the continent itself in Steve McKellar's ambitious lyrics, their existential questioning and spiritual longing the perfect correlative to the music's expansive atmospheric soundscapes, at once lush, feverish and exotic like a jungle, with the vast, arid spaciousness of a desert.
The band's name itself a reflection on that in-between time, not quite daylight, not quite darkness, but rather a shifting shade of gray. With songwriting influences ranging from Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen to Bruce Springsteen and Thom Yorke, Civil Twilight has been able to translate their outsider status—first in South Africa, and now in America—into a convincing voice for lyrics.